You’re free to listen to Mr Twin Sister’s self-titled, not-quite debut whenever, wherever and however you damn please. But at the risk of assuming authorial intent, the Long Island band would prefer you wait at least until the golden hour before getting started, as no one here is liable to be awake before then. Mr Twin Sister is an exclusively nocturnal being, though it’s not picky about time and place; it seeks quiet nights on the town, wild nights in, twilight, starlight, dusk, dawn, living after midnight, working for the weekend. You can imagine it soundtracking runways, clubs, and kitchen-drinking sessions alike, as Andrea Estella is surrounded by the crisp, luminescent glow of disco balls, streelamps, fluorescents, and anything but natural sunlight. For 37 minutes, Mr Twin Sister pay tribute to the way night allows people to discover who they are and who they want to be.
Transformation and self-discovery would be primary concerns for this band: though the former Twin Sister maintained the same personnel, the context around them has changed to the point where “Twin Sister” is a closed chapter. They’re one of the last remnants of a time when people still used the word “buzz band” to describe up-and-comers, often applied to playful, savvy, photogenic acts that served as a bridge between chillwave’s deconstruction of guitar-based music and the refurbishing of indie as a pop and R&B-based idiom.
Next to Cults’ “Go Outside” and Sleigh Bells’ “Crown on the Ground”, Twin Sister's wonderful 2010 single “All Around and Away We Go” was the definitive song of the time, and they were expected to follow suit toward the verge of modest stardom. When In Heaven dropped on Domino in late 2011, it did a lot of great things, but “coming on strong” wasn’t one of them—it may have been considered too wispy, too twee, and too weird for mass consumption. The past three years have been marked by a terrible, debilitating van accident and minor successes unrelated to In Heaven: early single “Meet the Frownies” was sampled by Kendrick Lamar, while Estella subbed in for Leighton Meester in the Kickstarter-funded Veronica Mars movie. Within the first five minutes, Estella admits, “Finding out the actual year/ Made me realize how much happier I was not knowing.”
In any other year, the album art for Mr Twin Sister would be likened to a demo and taken as foreshadowing of a raw, plaintive reintroduction, a negation of what came before. In 2014, though, it looks a hell of a lot like the Yeezus cover, and while Mr Twin Sister is pretty much the exact opposite of that record’s harsh and uncompromising sound, it is similarly fashion-forward, an amplification of what preceded it and proof that “DIY” doesn’t necessarily have to mean “lo-fi.” Opener “Sensitive” takes two minutes to fade in from a gorgeous blur of whirled synths and chiming ambient sounds, and once its supple, seductive beat drops, Mr Twin Sister blind you with their newfound taste for aggressive opulence. Throughout, Mr Twin Sister is every kind of luxury—it’s more pillowy and firm than the spindly, spiky dance-pop of their past, crystalline on the outside and glittery on the inside, a snowglobe of a Times Square celebration.